9th – 11th September 2011

Jan Verwoert

Jan Verwoert is a critic and writer on contemporary art and cultural theory, based in Berlin. He is a contributing editor of frieze magazine, his writing has appeared in different journals, anthologies and monographs. He teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, the de Appel curatorial programme and the Ha’Midrasha School of Art, Tel Aviv. He is the author of Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, MIT Press/Afterall Books 2006 and the essay collection Tell Me What You Want What You Really Really Want, Sternberg Press/Piet Zwart Institute 2010. He plays bass and sings in La Stampa (Staatsakt/Berlin).

Jan Verwoert will present The devils in the thing talk to the devils out there (sculpture, manufacture, juju-magic)

Sculpture is an action performed with things in space. What space? Social space, the triadic order of factory/ manufactory/workshop, but also the space of history and the biosphere. What kind of action? The struggle with the devil in the details, the spirits of places and objects, the demons of the past and the animal soul.